Category Archives: #WriteTuesday

#WriteFriday started in January 2015. The idea was that every Friday I would devote at least one hour to writing (and share it here on this blog). Since my work schedule isn’t consistent, I’ve since change #WriteFriday to be the day I share an update of what I’ve been working on over the last week.
#WriteFriday was changed to #WriteMonday on Aug 28, 2018 because Mondays are an easier day for me to provide an update than Fridays
#WriteMonday was changed to #WriteTuesday on Nov 26, 2018 because Monday is my writing day so it makes more sense to post my writing update after writing.

Not much of an update today. I got a bit messed up on what day it was (I kept thinking that yesterday was Sunday). This weekend was the Family Day Weekend here in Ontario, so I spent the weekend mostly out with friends and family skiing and snowshoeing. So no real writing update today (I’m going to get some writing in later today though!)

I will give a bamboo update though (probably the last one for a while): my bamboo is absolutely loving getting fresh filtered water every two weeks and has some new growth!!! Check it out:

Over the weekend, I finally sat down and read the February issue of bUneke Magazine. I try to read it every month so I know what’s going on (and also to find articles to highlight on the Sustainably North Twitter, @SustaintheNorth). In the February issue, Anna East writes about getting things done. You can find her article here:

Anna East’s article hit me pretty hard because I know I am very, very guilty of not finishing projects I am working on. Take right now: I’m part way through the story I’m writing for the Make Your Way Anthology, I wanted to start another short story about aliens in the wild west, I have three RPGs that I’m building on RPG Maker (Tears of the King, Memories, and Soccrpg). And I have various other short stories I have started and failed to finish for one reason or another.

I think Anna East’s problem is my problem, too: I want my work to be perfect. So when a project is failing to live up to my impossibly high standards, I stop working on it. I also have a million ideas and there’s never enough time to get them all written, so that doesn’t help either.

And I’m busy. I know that this is a problem that everyone has: there just never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done. But specific to me, I started my other blog, Sustainably North. I started volunteering my time with bUneke Magazine, writing a monthly column. I’m trying to get a bunch of reading done (I did make a goal to read 25 books this year, plus I just really like reading). And then I do a fair amount of writing for my day job too (even more right now because I’m helping out on a few bigger projects that are coming up). All of this has been making me feel fractured and really time-pinched. Plus after a full day at work, I find myself coming home and just not wanting to work on anything else because I’m done for the day – I’ve got nothing left.

And since I have no intention of stopping Sustainably North, volunteering, reading, or working on those projects at my day job, I am going to dial back on projects at home. As much as I would really, really like to work on a story about aliens in the wild west, I honestly do not have the time for it right now (especially since it got stuck in worldbuilding). Plus the plot just isn’t worked out right now anyway, while the story for the Make Your Way anthology is plotted and just needs to be written. So I’m going to stop working on the wild west story, and just focus on getting the Make Your Way story written. And at this point I need to make sure I don’t bog myself down with feeling that it isn’t good enough; this is a first draft right now, so of course it won’t be perfect! It has to be written before I can worry about polishing it.

This last week taught me a valuable lesson: I really shouldn’t make huge goals for January. With the holidays not quite ending for me until around the middle of the month, I found myself feeling just generally overwhelmed over the last few weeks trying to fit everything in. Since my last #WriteTuesday post, I spent a lot of time continuing to straighten up my place; I sorted through a lot of old documents, both physical and digital. I finished scanning all the old notebooks I’ve been wanting to scan, and shredded/recycled their pages. By Sunday I was feeling like I was actually on top of things for the first time this month (and wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed by all the things I had to do anymore).

So yesterday I finally turned back to the story I’m working on for the Make Your Way anthology. I’m not going to lie: over the last few weeks I started wondering if I should even bother to finish it because it was stressing me out a lot and I’m not quite sure why. I know a lot has to do with getting all the different branches to work on the story. Another part has to do with my intention of making it a game book, but it was sort of stuck as a regular choose your own adventure story (so a branching story but without the game elements built in). And I think I just didn’t plan it out as well as I should have, so I was getting a bit stuck while trying to figure out how the story should flow. But I know I’ve had a lot of trouble finishing things in the past, so I’d really like to persevere and get this done. But I think I need to take the pressure off myself a bit with it; with that in mind, I’m not going to be fighting to get it finished by the end of the month (not that it would be – I still have to finish writing the first draft before starting edits).

But it is slowly taking shape! Yesterday afternoon, I got all of the threads of the story to the same point: the player has found what evidence they can, so now they’re going to go and confront the person they suspect is behind the disappearance you’re looking into. Check out the new graph:

The red and purple colours show different endings points for the story so far. The blue and turquoise colours show different RPG choices the player can make.

As you can see, I’ve added in about 10 more sections since last week, so that’s definitely progress! I’m actually rather excited to get started on the endgame stuff now – I had ideas for it long before I planned out the middle stuff!

Also, I’m not quite sure why section 30 is just floating around in space near the top. I connected it to section 21 after saving the graph, so it isn’t unconnected to anything anymore.

So my plan is going to be to keep working on this in February. But I think I’m also going to work on another short story (I was eyeing up another market and had an idea for it, so I’d like to work on that, too). I know I’ve had a hard time sitting down and working on this story all month, so I’m hoping that if I’m feeling blocked, working on the second story will help get me unstuck. We’ll see!

Oh and in case you’re wondering how my lucky bamboo is doing, here’s a picture I took of it on Sunday:

It’s still turning yellow a bit, but not nearly as fast as it was previously. I’m going to leave it alone this week, then change its water next week as my friend instructed me. We’ll see how it’s doing next weekend. 🙂

Well, like the title says, I didn’t do a whole lot of writing over the last week.

Friday was my biggest writing day. I worked on a few posts for Sustainably North – I wrote one about the Ukrainian Christmas celebration my family and I have (and how this year we all made gifts instead of buying them, which was fantastic), then a few of me taste testing some milk alternatives (an introduction post and a post about soy milk). So that was good because I’m a bit ahead with the blog again.

Then after that, I spent a bunch of time just generally getting caught up on things. I went through a whole bunch of emails on Sunday. I finally took down most of my Christmas decorations. I repotted one of my violets, which was actually a double plant; I split them apart and put them in new soil together, so I’ll have to wait and see how they do (they haven’t been doing well in the pot they were in, so I’m hoping this will help!) Then I tried to clean up my lucky bamboo, which for reasons unknown has been turning yellow. So far it’s just been the leaves that have been turning; at a friend’s advice, I got a water filter and gave it filtered water instead of tap water. Hopefully it will like that better!

Here’s a before and after picture of my Lucky Bamboo.

Then yesterday, I tried sitting down to write but it just wasn’t happening. So after reading a book for a while, and watching some Youtube, I decided to start scanning some old documents and notebooks. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite awhile. So even though I didn’t get anything written, I at least felt somewhat productive. Plus that made some room for a few books that have been piling up around my place (they were mostly gifts from Christmas that I just hadn’t found a place for yet).

So even though I didn’t get any writing done, I hope that decluttering all of these papers will help give me the mental space I needed to write more this week. 🙂

Well, last week was a very long week. I was sick with a very sore throat. I ended up doing far more reading than writing because reading was easier to concentrate on (I read three books, plus finished another one I was part way through!) I’m not back to normal yet, but I am feeling a lot better now!

So yesterday I sat down to work on some writing. I got sidetracked by a friend who asked me to read over the beginnings of his story; I suggested a few edits and we talked about it for a bit before I went to work on my own stuff. 🙂

As you can see, I’ve fleshed out one side of the story (if you choose to see where the couple fought), but haven’t done anything with the other side (if you choose to investigate Amado’s house). Segments 16 and 21 both end this part of the story; they’ll be leading into the next chapter, so to speak (meeting with one of the character’s sister). The next thing I’ll be working on is how the story will flow if you choose to go to segment 9 (examining Amado’s house) instead. I want to get that part of the story up to the same point (deciding you need to meet with the sister); once that’s done I’ll continue on to the end.

I’m very happy with the amount of work I was able to put into this yesterday! I’m hoping to get a first draft done by next week. Wish me luck. 🙂

Happy 2019 everyone! Welcome back to another #WriteTuesday – the first one for the year! 🙂

Unfortunately this weekend I ended up getting sick. So I stayed home, drank a lot of tea, ate a lot of soup, and just generally tried to get better. It’s been slow going though – my throat has been sore and just hasn’t gotten better.

But in other news, over the weekend I heard back from Martian Migraine Press about “A Friend from the Deep.” Unfortunately it was rejected (which I was kind of expecting). So I looked through my list of saved markets on Duotrope and found a potential match for the piece in Zooscape. I sent “A Friend from the Deep” off to them and shall now resume waiting. I found myself obsessively checking my email that day to see if it got rejected by them, so I had to distract myself by going through some other emails, like the weekly ones Duotrope sends out; I found a few more markets that sound interesting, so once I get the story for the Make Your Way anthology done I’ll start working on stuff for them.

Yesterday afternoon I spent a lot of time reading the newest issue of bUneke Magazine (and scheduling tweets about it for @SustaintheNorth). This month’s magazine is full of some great articles about environmental issues plaguing our planet. It’s also got the first book review I wrote for them (I adapted one of the ones on Sustainably North) as well as my usual monthly column (which also happens to be a blog post adapted from Sustainably North). I actually sent the next two month’s articles for bUneke Magazine to the editor on the 2nd, so I’m now a little bit ahead for that! 😀

In the early evening I worked on next Monday’s post for Sustainably North. I decided to write about bUneke Magazine because I’m excited about the book review, plus Mary, the editor of bUneke Magazine, sent me pictures of that and my column. With that done, I’m going to turn away from bUneke stuff for the next few weeks, particularly on Sustainably North; I feel like the blog and its Twitter feed has gotten really caught up with the magazine, and I’d like to just focus on the blog alone for a little bit.

After that, I went through some emails for a bit. But by that point I felt like I had been at the computer for way too long, so I went to go and read. So that’s been my week: relatively productive despite being sick. How has yours been? 🙂

There’s going to be no #WriteTuesday this week or next week because today is Christmas and next Tuesday is New Year’s Day (which is when I write about my goals for the year). So I decided to take a break from #WriteTuesday until the New Year.

But I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

My Christmas message from a few years ago when I was in Florida over the Holidays. 🙂